


Don't Call Me That

by therosystarling



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fluff, Gay, Gay Awakening, M/M, Nothing Hardcore, Reddie, Secret Crush, Slight Smut, asshole parent alert, confused gay teen thoughts ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 07:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therosystarling/pseuds/therosystarling
Summary: Bullet points about Eddie Kaspbrak's life with Richie. (originally first put on mytumblr.)





	Don't Call Me That

-When Eddie was six, he makes his true first friend. He was marched to the principal’s office roughly, and only on the second week of First Grade, no less. Tears pricked his eyes as his teacher hissed disbelief at the words he had uttered just moments before, Eddie more afraid of what his mother was going to say when they called her than the actual Principal. He’s almost dragged in, his face now red with shame and fear, still trying his best not to cry. The Principal’s eyes had grown comically large as if he were a cartoon character, his face giving Eddie the most confused look a six year old could register, and when the teacher pulled the stout man aside and whispered curtly in his ear, Eddie’s tears finally spilled down his cheeks, knowing his mom was going to be told all about it, and wild thoughts about never being allowed outside ever again to play until he was an old, old man had raced through his mind. He watched the man’s mouth make a little _Oh_ sound, then nod at his teacher, before leading Eddie into a small room connected to his office. Inside was a boy-glasses impossibly thick and large on his small frame, both his front teeth missing, his hair unruly and wild, sitting at a small table and writing something down quietly. Eddie had a flash of anger at the boy, this _Richie_ , because if it wasn’t for him, he would not be here right now, and he most definitely would not be in the worst trouble of his life with his mommy.

“Since you want to be a potty mouth like your friend,” the principal sternly chided, “you both can have lunch with me, and stay inside for recess today.” Eddie took a seat at the table, wiping his tears away with his hands, sniffling, the principal placing a small stack of paper in front of him and handed him a a pencil. “You will be like your pal here and write, ‘I will not curse in class’ one hundred times while we wait for noon to come.” It was when the principal left and was out of sight and earshot that Richie scooted closer to Eddie and poked him in the side with the eraser end of his own pencil, and Eddie, looking up and into eyes huge and full of awe, heard the first words ever spoken to him by this kid.

“What did you _do_ , Eddie Spaghetti?” Eddie’s sniffles quickened, the sleeve of his sweatshirt soaked with tears and snot from wiping his face, his ears burning at the stupid nickname his teacher had given him when they had to introduce themselves on the first day back to school. “S’all your fault,” Eddie half-choked out, trying to write down his sentences. “You had to go and tell the class the bad word you learned from your cousin, and then I had to tell Mary-Elizabeth and, and, and, Brianna because they didn’t hear what you said. And I got caught, just like you!”

Richie had looked at him blankly for a minute, then let out quiet chuckles before slapping Eddie on the back fondly. “Well, _motherfucker,_ ” he said, coming out lispy due to his missing teeth. It was the word that got them both in trouble in the first place. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Eds!”

“That isn’t my name,” he snuffled back. “Don’t call me that.”

“Eds, you wanna come to my house after school? I got me a really cool tree house we can play in.” And in that minute, the crying slowed, because Eddie had never been asked by anyone to do _anything_ before, always left out of the few kids on his street’s fun, and told to go home whenever he was outdoors and he asked if he could play. “S-su-sure,” he smiled, not thinking about his mom, or his Principals shocked face, or his teacher’s burning anger in that moment. He and Richie ended up with just a warning and to make a promise to never swear in class again, their parents never called, and Eddie had the best afternoon playing _Sorry_ up in the tree house and stifling giggles from quietly reading _1001 Dirty Jokes_ with the boy that had glasses that endlessly slipped down his nose.

 

-When Eddie was nine, he had his first kiss. It wasn’t anything like the movies liked to show you, he didn’t see fireworks or hear bells ringing, and there was a lot less spit that he always gagged at when they showed a man practically eating a poor lady’s tonsils. He and Richie had been sitting on the grass of his backyard, reading comics and drinking a ridiculously bright neon blue colored fruit punch when Richie started talking on and on and on about last week’s school play, the one where their friend Bill had to go and kiss that redheaded girl, and how gross it was, and how could Bill _like_ that? “Did he say he liked it? Kissing a girl?” Eddie had asked with genuine curiosity, because if Bill had liked it, that was news to him.

“No, he didn’t say anything, but I can tell, Eds. Now he’s gonna wanna marry her and have, like, twenty babies, and kiss her all the time!” Richie took another sip of his juice, frowning at the thought. “If I’m kissing someone, it ain’t gonna be a dumb girl.”

Eddie gave him a look of confusion. “Then who you gonna kiss, idiot? You either kiss a girl, or you don’t kiss at all.”

“That’s not true, Spaghetti. I could kiss you.” And before Eddie could even ask why Richie would want to kiss _him_ of all people, Richie leaned over and planted his blue stained lips onto Eddie’s, quick and short, and pulled away with a satisfied look. “See? No stupid girl is gonna touch my lips, Eds.” Richie went back to reading his comic and Eddie blinked a few times, his mind going into overdrive about what happened. There may have been no fireworks or bells, but there was _something_ Eddie felt, a fuzzy feeling that made his stomach go all flippy and his face feel warm, and his heart beat a little too fast-all like when he ran around the sprinklers in the summer for too long. He had supposed maybe kissing was actually like _that_ , and not silly movie stuff, and that’s just how everyone feels when they kiss. “Don’t _call_ me that,” was all he was able to spit out after a minute, washing Richie’s germs away with his drink.

 

-When Eddie was eleven, he learned about sex, learned _way_ more than he really wanted to. It started off with Richie, in the midst of some disgusting conversation with Bill and Stan about some movie he watched the night before that had, as he put so elegantly, ‘two people fucking’ in it. He gave Eddie a wide mischievous grin, and added, “You know about fucking, _don’t_ you Eds?” When Richie had asked that, no, no he really didn’t know about that kind of thing-another classmate, Vincent-Vincent had whispered about it one day to him, he telling Eddie that his brother told _him_ it was when you rubbed your thing on a girl’s stomach, and stuff comes out to make a baby- and this stuff goes in her bellybutton, and then a baby grows in her. But it had to be when your thing felt _different._ “Like when you wake up in the morning and you _really_ gotta pee, Eddie, it’s gotta be like that.” Eddie had flushed at the thought of rubbing anything anywhere on anyone, so when Richie brought it up, he just sort of nodded, hoping Richie would drop it. But when their fifth grade class decided to start teaching about the human body and sex just a couple days after his question, Eddie looked at the diagrams and worksheets in pure horror. Now he knew that Vincent’s brother had been full of shit, but he still couldn’t quite grasp why on earth people would want to do something like _this_. His thing inside… _that_ thing? It seemed weird. Unthinkable. But it’s how he was here, how everyone got here, so that’s how he supposed what fucking was for. Babies. He and Richie had tucked themselves away in Richie’s room the Saturday after they had a quiz on labeling the female reproductive organs, playing a boring game of Crazy Eights with only two sixes, three Jacks, and one Queen, unable to go outside due to the freezing rain, when Richie teasingly asked Eddie again about _fucking_. Did he like the subject they were learning about?

“Well, we all gotta get here somehow, Rich. Can we just play the game?” And when Richie’s mouth hung open in shock and threw his hand of cards down, Eddie had gotten worried, gotten _embarrassed_ he had said something wrong. He wasn’t sure what-he had gotten a perfect score on that quiz, so Richie’s look of horror was confusing to him. But when Rich scrambled off the bed and slipped a magazine out from under his mattress and dangled it in front of Eddie, Eddie’s face paled.

“You think fucking is about making babies? Nah, it just ain’t about that.” Richie began to flip through the magazine, Eddie’s eyes growing bigger by the second at the pictures inside. “People like fucking because it feels _good_ , Eddie Spaghetti.” Eddie’s mouth felt dry as he looked-he never saw hands in so many naked places, never saw _mouths_ around things they shouldn’t go on, he’d never look at a tongue the same way again, he _knew_ it, and when Richie got to a page where a woman looked all hot and sweaty and shiny, Eddie finally tore his eyes away, not wanting to see anymore. Richie kept looking, kept turning the pages, whistling low while Eddie blushed. All he had read about for the last few days for health was body parts, and how a baby grows, and what happens to a boy when he got excited, but…he wasn’t? He wasn’t. The magazine didn’t make him feel sick or anything, but it didn’t make him feel any different. Just embarrassed. Wasn’t he supposed to feel something down _there_? Like Vincent’s brother had said? Of course, Vincent‘s brother had been wrong as hell about sex anyway, so maybe his brother was wrong about that, too. As Richie got to the last page, he laughed. “Eds! Look! They have other magazines we can order! We need to set up a P.O. Box so my old man doesn’t find out!” And when Eddie’s eyes roamed over the ads at the back, he picked up on one that caught his attention.

_‘Hot Studs Want You. Send A Check For **Discreet Gay Play** , Issue #9.’_

And Eddie’s gut _twisted_ , it twisted and he had no idea why. He knew what gay meant, he remembered his aunt with her girlfriend and their house and their dogs and they sent him cards every holiday. But it never occurred to him they had _sex_. It never occurred to him there were magazines out there, like the one Richie held, that had men with men, and when he had a brief wondering about what kind of pictures the magazine with the men would have, the feeling Vincent told him about washed over him a little, and he bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep from wanting to scream out in confusion. “Don’t call me Eds,” he huffed to Richie, standing up to grab his coat and take his chances walking home in the sleet instead of spending another second indoors trying to keep his thoughts from spilling out.

 

-When Eddie was fourteen, he avoided Richie for five days, the longest the two had ever been separated. Richie was a lot of things, one of them not being shy, so when he started talking about _tickling your pickle_ the year before, he had been met with sighs and groans and a million beep-beeps, because quietly, everybody was doing it, but it was something you weren’t supposed to just cheerily tell your friends all about. But now all Richie wanted to talk about lately was his dick, and nobody wanted to hear it, and he knew it, so he did it anyway. Eddie remembered Stan pulling Richie aside and shaking him after a horribly executed line of wanting to go home so he could ‘grease his pole,’ and yelling, “we get it, you like to fuck yourself, **we don’t talk about that shit in public, you asshole!** ” And it only seemed to give Richie _more_ reason to talk about it, to get everyone going, especially Stan the Man. It was the one day they were in Math class, the substitute teacher letting the kids talk instead of work because it was the last class of the day, when Bill asked if everyone wanted to go to his house for a movie, when Richie grinned wide and asked Bill if he had the movie with the girl who climbs out of the pool in her bikini and takes off her top. “That part of the movie is a little worn out at my house, Billy Boy,” he winked, and they all groaned and threw paper wads at him, and Eddie’s, “Stop being so fucking _gross!_ ”-That was what caught Richie’s attention. His arm slipped around Eddie’s shoulders, his mouth hovering mere millimeters from his ear, and a hot, breathy whisper no one but Eddie could hear oozed out like honey. ”C’mon, Eds. Don’t be like that. We can watch it together. Maybe we can give each other a helping hand?” And when he kissed Eddie on the cheek, Eddie broke out into a full blown sweat, a hot, scared panic, and he gathered his books and marched out of Math and just _left_. Ignoring the teacher yelling that there was still twenty minutes left, only grabbing half of what books he needed out of his locker, and biking away from school as fast as his legs could take him. He was grateful he was a white as a sheet, because his mother immediately jumped up to fuss over him when he arrived home, and he went with it, telling her he think he caught something, that he came home early because he felt so _sick_ , and when she insisted he take a warm bath and get into bed and she’d bring him soup, he hugged her, thankful in that moment (but only in that moment) she was the way she was. He cried softy to himself while the tub water ran, knowing that Richie had just been fucking with him, _angry_ that Richie was fucking with him, but it wasn’t Richie’s fault that Eddie was probably one of the very few, maybe the _only_ boy in Derry not thinking about a pretty topless girl in a movie or a bikini clad blonde on a poster with ruby red lips when he was in bed alone at night. No, he was alone in bed at night, shamefully thinking about the group of shirtless juniors at football practices, the movie with the group of young men, the one with a guy they called _Ponyboy_ , all pretty with soft skin and eyelashes that went on forever, and unfortunately as of late, he was thinking of Richie. Richie had creeped into those thoughts, thoughts you shouldn’t have for a friend, and Eddie _loathed_ himself for it. Loathed that he adored the way Richie pinched his cheeks, and called him cute, booped his nose, snaked his arm around him, and gave him those sweet smiles and naughty little winks when he said something stupidly dirty. He _especially_ loathed that whisper he gave him earlier, that voice that dripped nectar and sounded so goddamn sincere, knew he’d be thinking of it tonight and many other nights, and mumbled a prayer through his salty tears, praying like he did every Sunday at church to make this _go away_. He wanted to be like the other boys, he didn’t want this anymore. He just wanted to like girls, like all the other boys did, could he please just like a girl? Just _one_? Could he find someone that would make him happy? And after he washed up that afternoon and climbed into bed and sipped on chicken soup, he kept up the sick bit for days, looking the part with his sunken, puffy eyes and ruddy cheeks. He stayed home from school and asked his mother for no calls, no visitors from his friends because, _Ma, I just feel so sick, I don’t want them to catch it._ He could hear Richie’s voice asking if he was feeling better at the door every day at three p.m., sometimes alone, sometimes with one or more of the others. Eddie’s mother quietly handed him the homework he was missing every day, along with the things his friends were bringing him to feel better-apples from Mike’s farm, a packet of hot chocolate with a lipstick kiss print and _Feel Better XOXO_ scrawled on it from Bev, neat and cleanly written Calculus notes from Stan, Three adventure books from Ben, a comic book from Bill, and hand-made cards from Richie, one for every school day he was sick. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday’s made on just plain lined notebook paper, but Friday’s was more elaborate, it was Richie’s Art day, and his card was made from heavy stock, flowers painted on it, an actual flower stolen from the school’s lawn and pressed into it. He spent all day Saturday making up his homework feeling like a complete heel, lower than low for running off, knowing it wasn’t their fault, it was his, he was going to just have to swallow his pride and deal with the fact he liked Richie, and Richie wouldn’t like him back, never like that, anyway, and keep praying and hope this would all end soon. Sunday he shakily called him, and Richie sounded elated, almost as if he were over the moon that he was talking to him. “I thought you _died_ , Eds! That Sonia killed you and buried you in the backyard! I-we-all were so damn worried! Tell me you’ll be in school tomorrow!” A quiet tear rolled down Eddie’s cheek as he listened to Richie, his fingers softly brushing the paint on the card he made him. “I won’t if you keep calling me Eds, asshole.” And he could practically _hear_ Richie’s smile over the line.

 

-When Eddie was sixteen, he came out to his friends, and not as he had planned in his head-cool, calm, collected, maybe a slide show involved- but rather in a sad, idiotic, drunken blubber that spilled out from his lips. It was a party at Richie’s, Richie had proposed a bet that whoever was the last of them to get their license would have to throw a party at their house and be the designated driver for everyone else, and Richie then promptly lost said bet. He had been the first to take the driver’s test, but failed it, and then failed it twice more. (” _The sun was in my eyes!” “How the fuck can someone as tall as you have the sun in their eyes?_ ”) It was then down to Richie and Eddie, and Eddie passed his on the first take just three days before Richie’s fourth try(and finally succeeding) making Richie the loser, but a bet was a bet, and he owned up to it. Richie’s folks went to Vermont two weeks later, and the party was on. Eddie had arrived late, having been caught up in grocery shopping for himself-his fear about himself had subsided these past couple of years, and when his mother questioned he if was gay the week before, he owned up to it, told her **yes** , he was **gay** , did she _hate_ him? And while she never said one way or the other, she announced she needed “time off by herself to think,” and had left him, alone, to visit her sister all the way in Ohio. He never said a word to his friends about her leaving, and hoped they wouldn’t follow her lead whenever he told them. He handed a bottle of vodka he found in the cabinets off to Bev, who was the ‘drink master extraordinaire’ for the evening and told her to make them strong and keep them coming. A few hours later, there were six very drunk idiots laughing and stumbling and talking non-stop, and one very amused Richie, taking pictures and snickering. Richie was having way too much fun with them, asking them shit he knew they’d _never_ confess while sober, and when asked the question “which celebrity would you want oral from?” Eddie wasn’t really thinking about it deeply, his eyes unfocused and everything spinning-and before he knew what hit him, he slurred out “Jason Priestley.” And even in his state, he could feel the room just _shift_ , the mood changed suddenly, and he clapped his hand over his mouth and he started to cry a little. “Shit shit shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-I’m-I’m,” and the tears spilled more, he tried to keep them from becoming heaving sobs, and he could feel a hand rubbing his back as his secret finally bubbled to the surface. “I’m gay, okay? I’m _gay_. I’m sorry, I’m-please don’t hate me, I’m so sorry. I’m gay. My mom just left me all _alone_ when I told her, and I’m-I’m-goddamn it, I’m so _sorry_ ,” and suddenly they all were around him, hugging him and wiping his tears away and kissing his forehead, and telling him there was _nothing_ to be sorry for. Everything was alright. It was going to be okay. Richie told everyone it was time to go, and they all solemnly nodded in agreement. Richie delicately led Eddie up to his bedroom first and tucked him in his bed and told him he’d be back, Eddie still apologizing in his drunken stupor for being gay, for making a scene, for _everything_ , even when Richie left to drive everyone home and Eddie was all alone in Richie’s bed. He was still doing it when Richie got back , and Richie slid into bed next to Eddie and held onto him tight as Eddie’s cries stopped. Just as Eddie started to nod off, Richie’s soft voice cut the silence. “Did your mom seriously just leave you?” Eddie opened his eyes to see Richie close enough to his face that their noses nearly touched, his big brown eyes swimming with concern. “Yes,” he bitterly answered. “And she won’t return her failure of a son’s calls.” Richie pressed his forehead into Eddie’s, his face so, so, _so_ close now, his lips practically brushing against Eddie’s as he spoke. “You are not a failure. There’s nothing fucking wrong with you. There’s nothing to fucking _apologize_ for. You hear me? You have us. You have me. You don’t need her. And if I hear any apology for just being who you are again, so help me Eds, I will make you sit here and listen to me read out my Dirty Joke book like I used to when we were kids.” Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, a stray tear sliding down his face, and felt Richie wipe it away with his thumb. “You are the worst, Rich,” he mumbled. “Telling me stupid jokes…calling me Eds…just the worst.” Eddie’s eyes drifted closed again, his brain finally relaxed after everything that had transpired. He felt a slight kiss against his lips, soft like a breeze. “I love you, Richie,” he sleepily confessed. A beat. Then, in the dark, just above a whisper.

“ _I love you, too, Eddie._ ”

 

-When Eddie was eighteen, he knew he was in love. He had officially moved in with the Toziers when his mother simply never came back from Ohio, the only contact being a phone call a week after his coming out to his friends saying he was on his own, and he better not be there when his uncle came to get her stuff. Richie’s family immediately caught wind of the situation, chewed Sonia Kaspbrak a new one (if you think _Richie_ had a trashmouth, you should of heard the things his mother called Sonia), and moved Eddie into their home and Richie’s room without a second thought. Even though he had his own bed, he and Richie often found themselves beginning to sleep next to each other, or lounging entangled with one another, Richie’s legs often wrapped around Eddie’s, even if they were just talking about their day or what their plans for the weekend were. Soon fingers and hands became intertwined as well, and holding hands became kissing-small pecks at first, often just keeping it to their cheeks, the ones on the lips always short but satisfying. It was an excruciatingly slow walk into something new, but Eddie welcomed it, and Richie never seemed to push it.

But then there was that one night at the Denbrough’s, celebrating their wedding anniversary that they found themselves in Bill’s bedroom alone, finally kissing so deep and passionate just like Eddie used to gag at, but now he saw _why_ people kissed like that-it was when Richie moaned into his mouth after Eddie’s hand brushed against the crotch of his jeans that Eddie broke the kiss and asked Richie in all seriousness if he was gay, because despite their hand holding and kissing and cuddling, (and the obvious bulge he had felt when his hand rubbed up against him) Richie never had said anything, not once, about who he was into, or _what_ he was into, or even what Eddie was to him. Richie simply smiled and cupped Eddie’s face-”I’ve been flirting with you for like, a dozen years now, Spaghetti. You still haven’t gotten the hint?” Eddie took it as a coming out of sorts-at least in a Richie fashion. He knew he liked women a little, but maybe Eddie was what he _really_ liked-and their kissing resumed and would have gone a lot further if Bill hadn’t burst in and broke up the fun, and told them to _go home and do that in your own room, you animals!_

And they did, they did exactly that. They ditched the party knowing Richie’s parents would still be mingling there for a couple hours at least, and in the dark of their room, frantically kissing naked and roaming their hands all over each other as if they’d never be together again, a thought got caught in Eddie’s mind when Richie’s dick rubbed against his and Richie groaned out, “ _Oh, God, Eds. **God.**_ ” It wasn’t the ideal time to get a thought like this, no, but it had popped into his head as easy as could be-he wondered if while he had been praying all those years ago to God to make him straight and stop thinking about Richie, if Richie had been praying that Eddie was _gay_. It was a weird thought, sure, but maybe, if someone was up there, they saw a young Catholic boy confessing sins of thinking impure thoughts of another boy, but his _Hail Marys_ and _Our Fathers_ on the Rosary were secretly prayers to have Eddie be just like _him._ And maybe that’s why someone up there put them together all those years ago, because Eddie, sobbing and begging to be helped or saved, didn’t _**need**_ help or saving, Eddie needed _Richie_. Eddie wanted to ask him all that, was he praying for Eddie? Was he the answer to his prayers? Ask him all that, even in this most inopportune time, with Richie moaning and cursing on top of him, his mouth on Eddie’s neck leaving bites and hickeys, knowing they were both about to come any moment just from the grinding they were doing alone, when Richie stopped and propped himself up a bit, and stared into Eddie’s eyes and said, _I’m in love with you, Eds. I’m so fucking in love with you._ Eddie found himself crying, happy tears this time, maybe happy tears for the first time ever. “I’m in love with you too,” he sobbed back, his question answered. Richie could call him Eds all he wanted, for the rest of his life.

As long as his life was like this.


End file.
